Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 7th, 2001
Intro
From the haunting soundtrack to the career-making performances from the Robin Cook’s superb cast, Ginger Snaps defines what a modern horror film should be: its artfully crafted reality skirts the edge of the mundane while maintaining an edge of surrealism through progressive applications of noire, violence, and the supernatural. The movie thoroughly involves the audience in a gruesome mockery of teenage evolution. Ginger (Katharine...Isabelle) is a 16 year old high school student; her and her sister Brigitte (Emily Perkins) are two post-millennial Goths trapped in a Scissorhands-esque suburban hell. Ginger is attacked one night by some type of creature, and rapidly degenerates into a monster. Responsibility for stopping her falls on her sister and the town drug dealer as she tears a strip through her classmates.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 4th, 2001
Intro
CTHE has managed to squeeze yet another release out of the Monty Python franchise, this time in the form of a Holy Grail two-disc Special Edition. A single disc version with 2.0 sound streeted in September of 1999. While the discs are loaded with a mountain of extras and the video and sound are definitely better than the 1999 version, I would recommend this set for first time Holy Grail purchasers and suggest that current owners needn’t upgrade. This disc has regrettably bumped into the limitations...of digital enhancement and re-mastering; while it may be “better” (i.e.: it offers 5.1 versus the previous releases’ 2.0), the 1975 source material can only be pushed so far and the sound a video are just not great enough to justify repurchase.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 1st, 2001
Hoooo boy! I bet you had forgotten what movies were like in 1979, right? Let me sum it up for you then: slow moving, and brown. The contrast in cinematic styles alone is shocking – this movie is full of long, long, long 20 second shots accompanied by ear-straining orchestrals; contrast this to the frenetic pace of today’s movies where camera angles change every three seconds and you’ll see how film styles have evolved in the 20 years since this movie was made to match waning attention spans. The highlight of this fil... for me was Spock uttering “Resistance would be futile, Captain…” Now we know where today’s producers get their ideas.
Enough about the style though, let’s get digital: this is a great DVD release. Trek fans should buy it, without question. The movie features new scenes in the “Director’s Cut,” new visual effects, and a mountain of extras. One of the best things about this release is that the production crew worked with the mandate that they wouldn’t do anything that couldn’t have been done in 1979; as such the new scenes blend seamlessly with the rest of the movie. Contrast this with the Star Wars re-releases of a few years back where painfully new looking CGI animations attempted and failed to co-mingle with original footage; seamlessness makes this re-release a masterpiece (see the “Redirecting the Future” documentary included on the second DVD for more on this).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 29th, 2001
Intro
Weary of 24-hour CNN war coverage? Want to see a more emotionally satisfying version of war? Then look no further than this 1944 Oscar nominee.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 29th, 2001
Just in case you thought war propaganda was incompatible with good filmmaking, here’s this release in Fox’s War Classics series.
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 28th, 2001
Fans of Saving Private Ryan are hereby advised to look in to this 1950 effort, one of the original platoon films.
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 16th, 2001
I must say that upon learning about the SuperBit Series from Columbia-Tristar, I was very intrigued. I did not know what to really expect… no special features? I must say, that at least for Fifth Element: SuperBit, I am very impressed. Fifth Element was originally released on DVD a few years ago with no special features and very good video and audio quality… similar to the SuperBit ideology. Before I get into this disc, here is a bit about the plot…
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 17th, 2001
Intro
“If you have a taste for terror, you have a date with CARRIE.” So intones the original theatrical trailer for 1976’s “Carrie,” Brian de Palma’s cinematic adaptation of Stephen King’s identically named novel. This is a revenge story: Carrie is a high school student (at “Bates High” – yes this did come out after Psycho) who is tormented by her peers for her lack of physical prowess, weird family, homeliness, et cetera. Her contemporaries mysteriously overlook that fact that she is telekinetic and can...randomly set things on fire with a mere thought; thinking back to high school, I think that these two characteristics would have made her quite popular regardless of her volleyball ability. At any rate, the climax of the movie sees Carrie go ballistic and get her revenge on an uncaring high school populace and staff.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 15th, 2001
Intro
Forget the “blue-lightning = naked guy” time transport system; you can do real time travel in your living room with MGM’s “The Terminator SE.” Step back to a time before Linda Hamilton started taking steroids, and before Arnold Schwarzenegger stopped. A time when guys (Michael Biehn = “Kyle Reese”) wanted to look like Sting, and CGI animation didn’t even exist. Yes, step back into the terrifying stop-motion world of James Cameron’s “The Terminator” in this superb re-release.
